Grit Lab Report

Hi Meera,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, achievement, and universalism.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.

You said your top three talents were analytic, social, and kinesthetic.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you were not sure yet about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to actually go to the gym consistently .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said finish group project .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said less work to do over fall break .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said need to be assertive to my group members .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I see my group in class on Thursday, then I will ask them to be done with a rough draft by this weekend .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in speech .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt discouraged when receiving critical feedback, and discouraged when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a lot of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being neurobiology .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Something else .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Parent .

In one word, you said it made you feel awkward .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

your top goals should align with your interests and values
interest is an emotion
there might be a clue in my career C, even if it seems totally unrelated to the track i'm currently on
goal fusion can make tedious tasks better
Make my goals specific and give myself a cue
Get a coach!
Advice >> Feedback
stress is an adaptive response
change your thoughts and situation, don't just rely on willpower!
Find a mentor at penn
be a giver and find other givers

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Maria Irias Cardenas
Meera is a very genuine, considerate and kind person. I admire her positivity and her ability to lift up those around her. She was always very responsible at keeping the time during our discussions and helped organize team activities very well. Every time she would share something with the group, she would bring insightfulness and overall great input to the team. Her discovery project on food justice was very interesting to hear about and learn more. Before meeting her, I had never heard of the term and was very interested to hear about the activities she completed and the new insights she gathered from volunteering and researching on the topic. I think it was very kind of her to take time to do a project that worked towards the benefit of others and that made a small difference.
Allison Dao
I’m so glad we met through Grit! Getting to know you and sit next to you throughout the semester has been one of my favorite parts of Grit. Your positive attitude and willingness to share about your experiences is really inspiring. I look forward to our team discussions at the beginning of class to hear more updates from your week. You are also extremely supportive and encouraging, which I really appreciate in a teammate. I was able to feel comfortable sharing my own thoughts and experiences. I hope we keep in touch after Grit ends! I loved learning more about your Discovery project through your presentation, especially since this is something we have talked about since the beginning. It was great to see this project evolve into the holistic project you presented at the end. Your passion and dedication to food justice is inspiring, through all the activities you completed, from volunteering IRL to having a curiosity conversation with the Community Grocer. Your interest made me want to learn more about the issue as well. I love that you sought to explore this issue in every aspect and way, and how much you took advantage of the Discovery project to do so.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.